Everything started with an assault. The employee of a parcel company in Malaga denounced that some strangers had stolen, at gunpoint, the content of two refrigeration arcons that had Germany as destination. It was in November 2023. And since then the National Police has developed an investigation that has ended the dismantling of two drug traffickers organizations: one dedicated to sending hidden drugs in appliances and another to steal the merchandise of other criminal gangs. There are 10 people arrested and 1,700 marijuana plants, 600 kilograms of cogollos and 11 surveillance drones have been intervened. As in all similar operations, agents also found weapons. This time three, one of them of war, in addition to numerous ammunition and bulletproof vests.
The police work of this operation, called Wilson, has been developed through two parallel routes. The first was focused on finding out who had sent those refrigerators, because they suspected that what they carried inside was some narcotic substance. The first step was to verify that what names were the beans and it was soon confirmed that they were those of third parties to whom they had stolen their documentation. Without their consent, they appeared as authors of numerous shipments to several European countries through different parcel companies. One of them could be intercepted with 20 kilos of hidden marijuana buds inside four electric thermos, which had been acquired days before on a large surface of Malaga. Everyone had installed a GPS to always have their location.
The agents managed to locate who were responsible for the shipments, which were settled in the towns of Vélez-Málaga and Torrox, in the region of the Axarquía (east of the province of Malaga), in addition to Cártama, municipality to the north of the capital. Three people were arrested and, after their judicial provision, were sent to provisional prison. In their homes and farms, 1,765 marijuana plants were found in different growth phases and 600 kilos of clothing ready to send. Stolen documentation was also found – with which they made the shipments – as well as an accounting notebook, two GPS beacons and 13,000 euros in cash, in addition to two vehicles.
Wigs, masks and automatic weapons
The second route of research focused on knowing who had assaulted the delivery man. Everything pointed out that those who had done knew what there were inside the refrigerators and, therefore, the first hypothesis was that it could be a band dedicated to dumps, that is, to perform narcotic robberies between drug groups. The first step was to identify the vehicles they had used in the robbery and, from there, the police threw the thread to verify that they were right: the group was specialized in subtracting large amounts of drugs to their rivals. In fact, its leader, according to the Police, was one of the pioneers of this activity on the Costa del Sol and has been based in Malaga for decades.
The agents managed to know that the organization planned to make a new turnaround in a hole nursery in the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz). They planned to leave from Benalmádena, but while preparing the weapons for this new assault, three of them were surprised and arrested by the National Police. At the home where they were an automatic firearm with silencer, a shotgun, abundant ammunition, bulletproof vests, wigs and flanges, in addition to a van ready to be loaded and masks such as those used by the Anonymous collective. Also documentation that guided up to two other locations where geolocation telephones and devices were found.
From everything, the material intervened, the operation continued with a new phase in which four more arrests were made and five more records were made in Fuengirola, Mijas and the city of Malaga. In total, 400 cartridges have been seized —70 of them of war – and a rifle, in addition to 11 surveillance drones and a 3D printer that served to make parts for these devices. Also false license plates and 35,000 euros in cash.
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